


Human Enough

by Morninglight (orphan_account)



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Alternate Universe, Call me Tincan Trash, F/M, First Time, Fluff, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Porn With Plot, Porn with Feelings, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Postnatal depression, Protectiveness, Vaginal Sex, stretch marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-02
Updated: 2016-02-02
Packaged: 2018-05-17 19:23:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5882584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/Morninglight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Discovered to be a synth and exiled to the Commonwealth by the Brotherhood of Steel, Danse is working as a farmhand when he meets a woman searching for her son who claims to be a Minuteman. To her, he is human enough.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Human Enough

**Author's Note:**

> Note: Thanks for reading and reviewing. Trigger warning for mentions of death, violence, grief/mourning, fantastic racism, and implied drug use/addiction, misogyny, PTSD, postnatal depression and suicidal ideation. Moar smut, yays! AU for our favourite Paladin (or not in this case) and Sparrow Finlay, my head-canon Sole Survivor.

 

“Is this Tenpines Bluff?”

            Danse paused in the middle of shovelling Brahmin shit into the compost that fed the neat rows of tato plants as a woman’s voice, warm and smooth as the whiskey he was given as a gift when promoted to Paladin, cut through the silence. Six months of working as a farmhand in the Commonwealth and he was losing his edge – the crunch of boots on gravel and dried leaves should have alerted him to her presence. That or he was just too sunk in grief after Wade and Anna’s deaths at the hands of raiders while he was trading for them at Graygarden with the robots. He’d planted the mutfruit saplings over their graves in honour of the kindness they’d shown him.

            “It is,” he confirmed, turning around and gripping his shovel like the weapon it was. “How can I help you?”

            “My name is Sparrow and I’m with the Minutemen,” answered the woman, positively tiny compared to him, holding her laser musket in the most unprofessional grip he’d ever had the misfortune to see. Only the earnestness in her voice convinced him, as she was clad in a snug-fitting Vault suit of gold-edged royal blue, dusty and dingy from the Commonwealth’s grime, which showed the milk-softness of a new mother and a decided lack of muscle. Her chestnut-brown hair was twisted into a bun at the nape of her neck and aside from a patch of pinkish-white around her left eye, her skin was tanned with lines of pain and strain ageing her fine-boned face. “Are you Wade?”

            Danse gestured to the right grave dug behind the tiny shack where they’d once lived. His shelter, a rough lean-to of scavenged corrugated iron and age-roughened wood, was near the ruins of an old house just north of the tatos he inexpertly tended. “If you’re here to see him, there he is,” the exile said bluntly. “The raiders killed him and Anna.”

            “Oh hell.” The Minuteman looked ready to cry. “Where are they from?”

            “Corvega just outside of Lexington,” was Danse’s curt reply. It was unfair to take it out on this woman, who looked to be a new recruit – maybe someone who’d left Vault 81 just outside of the Boston ruins? But he didn’t have a decent rifle and some power armour to go avenge Wade and Anna, so he tried to keep their farm going in memory of their decency. And there was the ever-present bitterness that crawled through his artificial veins. “You should go and tell your superiors that they failed and the only thing they can do is avenge Wade and Anna.”

            “There _are_ no superiors,” Sparrow retorted just as bitterly. “Just Preston at Sanctuary and me.”

            “What the hell happened?” Danse demanded. There had been some rumours of a massacre at the Minutemen’s fort and another at a town to the south…

            “Most of them died between Quincy and Concord,” Sparrow said quietly. “I stumbled across Preston and a few settlers by accident and had to join them or be killed by raiders.”

            “Then why the hell is this Preston sending a _civilian_ into a known raider den?” the exile asked in disgust. “You aren’t even holding the musket properly!”

            “Three days ago I crawled out of a cryo Vault just north of my old home and found everything nuked to hell and back!” Sparrow snapped at him. “Before that, I got to see some scar-faced mercenary shoot my husband in the head and steal my baby Shaun! Oh, and did I mention it’s been about two hundred years since I was put on ice?”

            “All the more reason you should have been given some training before being sent out,” Danse told her bluntly. “I don’t know anything about this Preston but he sounds like a poor excuse for a commanding officer!”

            She stared at him for a moment before bursting into hysterical tears and Danse swore softly. Incompetence in a commanding officer pissed him off almost as much as seeing a civilian thrown into the heat of battle without preparation and he’d taken out his anger towards the Minutemen on a woman who was essentially a shell-shocked Initiate.

            He strode up to Sparrow and gathered her into his arms. “I’m sorry,” he muttered, rubbing her back soothingly. “None of this is your fault.”

            She buried her face into the crook of his shoulder and wailed the most mournful keen he’d ever heard a person utter, even after attending the funerals for Elder Lyons and his daughter Sarah a few years later. This woman wasn’t just mourning the loss of her family, she was grieving the loss of her world to the pride and foolishness of humanity allowing technology to run amok.

            As Sparrow released her pent-up grief, Danse pondered a few things. Once the initial rush of anger at the Minutemen passed, he considered that this Preston mightn’t be an experienced officer himself and so therefore made mistakes. He deserved a chewing out, of course, for sending a new mother into combat but it needed to be determined whether he was simply lacking experience or was truly untalented as a leader.

            The second was that this was the first time he’d embraced someone since Rivet City, since before he joined the Brotherhood of Steel. After he donned the uniform, of course, his contact with other people was defined by salutes and forearm clasps and the odd slap on the back. Knights and Paladins didn’t do hugs, it ruined their stern image.

            The third was that the woman weeping into his shoulder was soft and lovely, a fragile remnant of the old world that fitted well into his arms. Danse had to shift his stance so his half-erection didn’t rub against poor Sparrow, who was also newly widowed. That would be the final slap in the face for her.

            By the time her tears ran dry, the sun was westering in a blaze of pink and gold, lilac shadows extending into charcoal. “I’m sorry,” she hiccupped.

            “Don’t be. It should be me who apologises,” Danse told her gruffly as he reluctantly let her go, hands sliding down her arms. “There’s a spare sleeping bag in the main shack. I’ll wake you at dawn.”

            He turned and walked away before he could betray himself. He might be a soulless synth, but he would maintain the last shred of decency and honour left to him since leaving the Brotherhood and _not_ let Sparrow know he was attracted to her.

…

As the soldier stalked away, Sparrow hugged herself. She didn’t even know his name yet there was a paradoxical mixture of compassion and harshness in the heavily built settler. If she could persuade him to join the Minutemen, there would be three, and one of them a professional to match Preston’s well-intentioned plans. Of course, there were shadows and scars in his dirt-brown eyes just as there had been in Nate’s green-hazel ones. He might not be up to it.

            Sparrow pumped herself a bucket of fresh water, recalling Mama Murphy’s hoot of laughter when it was revealed she didn’t know how to use a pump. The soldier needed someone else to tend the crops here, half-ripe tatos hanging heavy on their glass-green vines, because even _she_ could tell they were being tended inexpertly. Marcy and Jun Long would shake their heads and sigh at the thought of so much food potentially going to waste.

            She gladly peeled off her Vault suit once the soldier was out of sight, using the light of the rising moon to clean herself with the wastelander’s soap of crushed hubflower and carrot flower petals. The Minutemen, it seemed, knew the use of every plant in the Commonwealth and with the practice from recalling detailed legal briefs from the top of her head, Sparrow had mastered their pharmacopeia with a speed that left Preston speechless as she helped move the chem station closer to the house across from hers.

            He still wasn’t happy with her giving Mama Murphy the Jet but after that old woman predicted the deathclaw which _still_ nearly killed her while in power armour, Sparrow would take all the oracular help she could get, though using it sparingly so she didn’t strain her heart. She had a name and a phrase that would make it clear in time, the prophetess promised while still high as a kite. At the moment, the sole survivor of Vault 111 would take all the help she could get.

            Sparrow looked over her shoulder at the soldier’s shack, lit by the golden glow of a tarnished lantern. He was on his knees, back to her, and the pumping motion of his right hand left no illusions as to his current activity.

            Somehow she found it in her to smile. The soldier’s erection had twitched before he shifted stance in a gentlemanly attempt to avoid her finding out that he enjoyed holding her, no doubt because she was bawling her eyes out on a flannel-covered shoulder.

            _He’s starved for human contact,_ she mused sombrely as she rinsed out her hair, glad to be washing it for the first time since emerging from the Vault. The greasy remnants of hairspray had clung to the strands, the last sign of her pre-War life where she’d arranged her hair in the bangs and upswept bun Nate preferred for formal occasions. He was going to address Fraternal Post 115 about the horrors of war and its effect on soldiers in an attempt to drum up more support for the shell-shocked and broken veterans who were generally swept under the rug because of patriotism.

            Nate and this unknown soldier would have understood each other. She knew the shadows and scars left by the military you’d pledged your life to betraying you only too well as she’d lived through it with her husband.

            Sparrow watched the broad shoulders flex, the right arm shift and flushed as he stiffened for a moment before abruptly relaxing. Then she looked away, feeling oddly guilty for spying on him.

            If he was gentleman enough to try and respect her grief by hiding his attraction, she should respect that and give him his privacy when he tended to his needs.

            She used the rest of the water and petal mix to scrub her Vault suit and underwear, and hung them out to dry by using nails as clothing pegs. Then she entered the shack that belonged to the couple the Minutemen had arrived too late to save and collapsed on the sleeping bag, sleep taking her as she wondered how the hell she was going to kill a group of raiders.

…

Danse hissed as he saw the drying clothing hung from nails on the shack, the rosy light of dawn filtering through ash-grey clouds to the east. He’d jerked off last night, ashamed of himself and his lack of discipline but unable to sleep otherwise, and now the universe decided to punish him further with the knowledge that Sparrow was naked in the shack.

            The synth cursed softly and went to wank again before waking her. He was a _machine._ He shouldn’t be so ruled by biological urges.

            Technically, he should be dead. But at the last moment Arthur Maxson had dropped his eyes and his gun, snarling at the construct to get out of the Capital Wasteland before he killed it like an animal. Danse obeyed the last command of his Elder and found his way to the Commonwealth.

            Once he’d brought himself to climax again and washed his hands, he heard Sparrow calling out, warning him that she was about to exit of the shack. His cock twitched and Danse snarled at the thing to show some fucking discipline for a change.

            By the time he marched up the slope, he was relieved see her back turned to him as she zipped up the form-fitting Vault suit. Of course, he was presented with the view of a soft, rounded posterior and long legs through the royal blue cloth, but he forced himself to imagine a super mutant naked and looked away.

            “I’m escorting you back to this Sanctuary,” he declared once she turned around. “You are in no way, shape or form capable of taking on the raiders at Corvega. Not to mention the fact that Lexington is riddled with ghouls and Gunners. You’re a civilian and if you were lucky, you would be killed in five minutes.”

            He chose not to elaborate the other fates that could befall her; she looked intelligent enough to figure them out on her own.

            “Are you familiar with power armour?” she suddenly asked after considering her words.

            Danse flinched. How could she know? “I am,” he admitted tersely.

            “Good. We have a set of T-45 armour at Sanctuary.” She smiled sadly. “You walk like you’re used to carrying a lot of weight. Nate was an armoured trooper, so I know how someone moves when they’re used to wearing a half-tonne of steel.”

            The thought of being properly armoured again- Danse cut off the fantasy of being a Paladin once more. That life was dead to him now. “Nate was your husband?”

            “Yes.” She bit her bottom lip and looked down. “You… remind me of him.”

            “You do his memory a disservice by comparing me to him,” he told her sincerely. “I am in no way a good man.”

            Very technically, he wasn’t a man at all, just an automaton that pretended to be one.

            Her eyes flashed. In the daylight they were a deeper, richer brown than his own. “You’re decent enough to let a woman cry herself out on your shoulder,” she challenged.

            “I have _some_ basic morals,” Danse retorted. “I’m sure your husband was a hero and credit to his military, but I am… a deserter, I guess you could say.”

            Sparrow laughed harshly. “My husband was a veteran with PTSD and a drinking problem who insisted his steak be cooked precisely the way he wanted it every morning. There are no heroes in war, only victims.”

            “Then why do you cry for him?” Danse was trying to understand how she could mourn a soldier who was as broken as many he’d known in the Brotherhood.

            “Because I was a new mother with postnatal depression and a chem addict who needed a robot butler to care for her baby,” Sparrow confessed, self-loathing in her voice. “We’d… just gotten our shit together. Nate was going to address the Fraternal Post 115, which was full of military big wigs, about the need for better veteran support and I had kicked the Daytripper habit. Then the bombs fell. On the upside, I still have the robot butler.”

            “If we’re going to make shocking confessions to each other, then understand I spent last night imagining my cock buried so deep in you that an earthquake wouldn’t shake me loose,” Danse growled. “Your legs were wrapped around me and you were gasping my name in between those sweet little moans a woman makes when you play with her clit.”

            “That would be hard as I actually don’t know your name,” she said, a flush to her tanned cheeks.

            “Danse,” the synth told her.

            “Danse.” She tasted the name, that whiskey-warm voice rolling around the single syllable. “Why are you a deserter, Danse?”

            “I’m a synth.” Since they were suddenly sharing their darkest secrets, Danse figured he might as well admit this one. “A robot, made to look and act human. At some point I escaped an organisation known as the Institute, had my memories altered to appear human and joined a military force known as the Brotherhood of Steel, which is dedicated to making sure the mistakes of the Great War are never repeated.”

            “Let me guess, the Brotherhood doesn’t particularly like synths.”

            “According to their doctrine, I am an abomination that should have been executed once it was apparent what I was.” Danse forced the words out in a pained growl. “I rose to the rank of Senior Paladin under the command of Sentinel Sarah Lyons and was set to become the Sentinel of Elder Arthur Maxson. But the Scribes had created a new test based on X-Rays that scanned for synthetic components and I was found to possess them.”

            “You escaped an unfair execution. That’s hardly desertion,” Sparrow said slowly.

            “I was actually exiled. I had been one of the main mentors of Elder Maxson and in the end, he couldn’t shoot me. He took my holotags and told me that if he ever saw me in the Capital Wasteland again, he would kill me like an animal.” Danse laughed sourly. “And so I came back to the Commonwealth, working as a labourer and occasional mercenary. Wade and Anna let me stay here in return for protection and help… and the one time they needed me, I was away. I failed them as much, if not more, than the Minutemen did.”

            “Oh Danse.” She breathed his name, imbued it with compassion and sorrow for him, and the synth flinched. He was an automaton who had confessed to wanting to fuck her when she just lost a husband and was looking for her missing son. “Come to Sanctuary. We could use your help, even if you don’t choose to help the Minutemen, and you could use the company.”

            “Do you not understand?” he insisted, staring down at the smaller woman. “ _I want to fuck you_. If I come with you to Sanctuary and stay, I will masturbate every morning and night thinking of you. I will watch the sway of your hips as you walk around and find reasons to follow you, to touch you. I’m a fucking synthetic abomination and you… you have brought life into this world. I want… God, I want to touch the marks of childbearing on your belly and hips, suckle your nipples until you moan with pleasure.”

            Sparrow swallowed as she realised the reality of what Danse was. Then her eyes darkened, the pupils dilating until there was nothing but a ring of rich brown.

            “Prove it,” she challenged, deliberately reaching up to unzip her Vault suit.

            Danse was hard in an instant as he strode forth and picked her up. He would, God forgive him… He would.

…

Danse laid all three sleeping bags down in layers before putting Sparrow on the improvised mattress, growling when she went to unzip her Vault suit some more. He’d pulled off his clothing, eyes fixed on her like she was Mary Mother of God and he an unworthy sinner, and she silently congratulated the Institute on creating such a fine specimen of a man. He needed this and she did too, to chase away the memories of what was lost, to ground her in this reality of rust and ruin. Nate was dead and while she would find Shaun, there could be no going back.

            The synth needed this because he thought himself unworthy of desiring anyone. That he had an obvious thing for women who’d given birth probably played into some issues from being artificially created, but she wasn’t a psychologist. All she knew was that there was a good man before her growling some absolutely filthy things about how he wanted to bring her pleasure. She didn’t know if he’d been with a woman before but he certainly had quite the imagination.

            “Let me touch you, Danse,” she coaxed gently. “I want to bring you pleasure too.”

            He ran a hand through his thick brown-black hair, leaving it standing on end. There was so much about him that reminded her of Nate from the battle scars to the solid muscle of an armoured trooper – but there was enough difference that she would never mistake him for her lost husband. Danse was an absolute behemoth of a man, nearly seven feet tall barefoot and easily twice Sparrow’s weight and thrice her muscle. Nate had a long, slender circumcised cock and the habit of waxing his body hair from the necessity of wearing a power armour undersuit so often. The synth was hairier, a trail of dark hair leading from his navel to his thick, heavy cock that absolutely leaked.

            “No,” he finally said. “I don’t know why you’re doing this to begin with, allowing me to fulfil-“

            “Perfectly natural, healthy desires, Danse,” she interrupted gently. “I… need to forget about the past few days. Nate isn’t coming back, much as I’d love him to, and you need to know that you are as human and worthy as anyone else of having your desires met.”

            He licked his lips with a thick tongue, eyes burning. “Are you doing this to persuade me to stay in Sanctuary?” he asked.

            “While we could certainly use your help in Sanctuary, I would never use your desire for me as a bargaining chip,” Sparrow said softly. “That would be wrong in my eyes.”

            He massaged his thighs and she imagined those large, callused hands on her skin. “I want to touch you,” he finally said. “That you allow this… is gift enough, more than I deserve.”

            Sparrow smiled up at him, feeling a pang of sorrow. Nate had always considered sex his due – he accepted it when she wasn’t in the mood but whenever there was a chance, he would try to initiate it. Danse seemed to think she was offering him a holy sacrament.

            “As you wish,” she said.

            Those huge hands came up, callused fingers resting on her cheeks as his mouth descended on hers. His lips were soft and human enough as they tentatively brushed hers, the tongue wet and thick as it slipped inside, shying away a little when she tried to twine hers with it.

            Sparrow’s arms slipped around Danse’s waist as she pressed herself to him, thumbs rubbing soothing circles into his warm, solid flesh to relax him. The kiss deepened as he became more certain in his actions, his body lying atop hers in a comforting weight that she hadn’t felt since two days before the bombs fell. She was as lonely as he, she realised, as she shifted to allow Danse greater access to her neck after he broke the kiss.

            “I… have memories of this from my false life in Rivet City.” Danse paused and flushed. “I don’t know if these are true memories as once I joined the Brotherhood, I was too busy with my duties to pursue intimacy with my fellow soldiers.”

            “Then let’s make some memories that you know are real,” Sparrow murmured, resting her forehead against his.

            “Why?” he asked. “Your husband’s dead, your son missing…”

            “I’m lonely and I want to forget for a while,” she admitted. “If that makes you feel like I’m using you…”

            “No!” Danse’s voice was emphatic. “No,” he repeated in a gentler tone. “I can give you something you need.”

            Then his mouth crashed upon hers as thick fingers pulled down the top of her Vault suit to bare her torso to his explorations.

…

Life in the Wasteland was hard and fast. Grief and mourning passed through a community like a summer radstorm, leaving a lingering trace of pain but swiftly over. To Danse, Sparrow wanting to forget, wanting to ease her loneliness made perfect sense, even if it didn’t to her. He saw it in the haunted gaze, the guilty twist of her mouth as she asked whether she was using him.

            She had no comprehension of the gift she was giving him. Her hands stayed in one place, soothing him with little kneading motions, as he unhooked the white bra she wore to reveal small, soft breasts tipped with dusky-rose nipples. The memories of which he couldn’t be certain featured hard, wiry bodies with callused fingers that tweaked and tugged – Sparrow was silken fragility, her hands as soft as her breasts, though that would change as she grew accustomed to life in the Commonwealth.

            The lines on her belly were graven deep in the soft skin, pink-silver marks that proclaimed her fertility. Danse didn’t know how others felt but to him, the most beautiful thing was a woman who’d given life without the cold interference of science.

            Where the tan faded, she was more of a rosy-pink, a few freckles scattered here and there with a mole under her right breast. He let his mouth and hands wander where they will, tasting and touching, bringing a nipple to hardness with fingers even as his tongue sampled the lingering traces of hubflower and carrot flower on her skin. Her mouth had tasted like some complex spice from a half-forgotten place and...

            When she made her first gasp of pleasure, he lost the train of his thought and recalled everything he’d told her. Danse had always prided himself on keeping a promise and so he set himself to it.

            Somehow he got her arms out of the sleeves of her Vault suit to let him pull down the garment properly and take the bra off. He paused to stare down at her face until the half-lidded, slightly slack-mouthed expression twisted into concern.

            “Danse?” she asked, voice a mixture of worry and chagrin.

            “I’m fine,” he assured her roughly. “Just… you are lovely.”

            “So are you,” she breathed, fingers running down the side of his face.

            He didn’t correct her. Instead he returned to making her gasp with pleasure and imprinted the sound of her sighing his name on his memory forever. The false memories had been rather extensive on how to do that and the barracks talk of his fellow Knights and Paladins filled in the rest.

            Eventually she was naked and his cock twitched at the sight of her, rose-flushed skin peppered with the red marks of his mouth, half-lidded eyes glazed with trust and pleasure. Why he’d been given such a gift, he had no idea. He was a construct, a-

            “Danse,” she breathed. “What’s wrong? Do you want to stop?”

            “No,” he growled. “I want…”

            He wanted to be buried in her, as he’d told her when he confessed to her his desire. But now he was on the precipice, he felt like he was violating something he was unworthy of. Who knew what passed for come in his system, what it would do to her?

            She rose to a kneeling position on the heaped sleeping bags. “I could give you a blowjob if you’re worried about coming too soon. That would take the edge off.”

            “Blowjob?” His false memories never mentioned that word.

            “I take your cock into my mouth and lick, suck-“ Her warm, whiskey-smooth voice uttered the words without shame. “It’s the least I can do after that performance.”

            His lips peeled into a feral snarl at the thought. His cock twitched again and he hastily wrapped his hand around it to avoid splattering Sparrow and the sleeping bags with come. Hand sticky from his release, he stared at the Vault Dweller, torn between yearning and shame.

…

“Sex is a two-way street, Danse,” Sparrow told him as she took his hand, the one soaked in come. “I give you pleasure and you give me pleasure. At least, that’s how it’s supposed to be.”

            He stared at her, unresisting, as she brought his hand to her mouth and began to suck the fingers slowly, giving him plenty of opportunity to pull it away. The come tasted salty and bitter, just like the stuff that had come from Nate’s cock, and she wondered just how sophisticated the technology of this Institute was.

            Sparrow licked her lips, wondering how the dynamic had shifted from Danse aggressively telling her what he wanted from her to her essentially guiding a virgin through his first sexual experience. As she swallowed the last of his seed, she stared at his face, watching the emotions shift across the strong, handsome features.

            “You’re human enough to taste like the real thing,” she coaxed, suspecting that his ambivalence came from his artificial creation. She ran her fingers across the damp palm of his hand, feeling the shift of his muscles as the thick digits closed in to hold her hand. “To me, you’re human, Danse.”

            The solid man, who could break her in two without sweating, made a harsh noise in the back of his throat and began to weep.

            Sparrow abandoned all traces of sensuality and took him in her embrace, just as he had last night. Her arousal faded to a dull ache as she comforted the synth, a slow anger rising to take its place. Whatever the Institute was, whoever the Brotherhood of Steel were, they had scarred this good man in ways she couldn’t even comprehend.

            After a few minutes, Danse wiped his eyes, tears still streaking his scarred, stubbled cheeks. “You’re just a dream,” he said hoarsely. “I’m just… imagining this…”

            In answer, Sparrow kissed his cheek, tasting the salt on it. Human enough to come, human enough to cry. “Feel real enough?” she asked gently.

            “Yes,” he growled.

            “Then you’re human enough, Danse.” She ran a hand through his surprisingly soft brown-black hair. The similarities to Nate were on the surface; Danse was an entirely different man damaged in entirely different ways.

            “They called me ‘it’ when they found out I was a synth,” he whispered. “The Brotherhood. One moment I was a would-be Sentinel, right-hand man of the Elder himself, volunteering to test this new way of looking for synths; the next an abomination of technology, a _thing_ sent to infiltrate the order by an enemy with sinister plans.”

            _I need to warn Preston about this Brotherhood of Steel,_ she thought distantly as she hugged him, making soothing noises. _They don’t sound like good people._

“Well, from the sounds of it, they’re assholes and fools for squandering a good soldier,” she told him aloud.

            He shook his head. “I shouldn’t have panicked and fled. I should have set an example by accepting my fate.”

            “Bullshit.” The obscenity was torn from Sparrow’s lips like a cry. “You did what any other rational sentient being would have done, Danse, and got the hell out of dodge before they could put you down like a rabid dog for no fault of your own.”

            She kneaded his hand with her fingers soothingly. “You’re your own man, Danse. Human enough to cry, human enough to come, human enough to be a decent person.”

            “Human enough…” He breathed the words like holy sacrament. Then those dirt-brown eyes closed, his face screwing up like a heartbroken child. “Why do you care so much? You’re helping some fool of a Minuteman who should know better than to send a civilian into heavy conflict, you’re… helping me. Why?”

            “Because you can never have too many friends, especially in the Commonwealth,” Sparrow told him gently. “Because caring about and helping each other is what decent human beings do, Danse. Because you cared enough to let me cry on your shoulder last night.”

            A shudder ran through his massive frame. “Human enough,” he repeated, tasting the words like a fine whiskey now. “Maybe you’re right.”

            “I’m a lawyer. Well, I _was_.” Sparrow found some humour to inject into her voice. “Of course I’m right.”

            His eyes opened again and in them she saw a veteran commander. “We’re going to Sanctuary and I’ll look at this set of T-45 armour,” he announced gruffly. “Then I’m going to Corvega and wiping out the bastards there.”

            “We,” she murmured. “We.”

            “No.” His tone was abrupt. “You’re a civilian-“

            “I’m a fucking Minuteman,” she snapped. “And… from what you’ve hinted, this Institute might have been the ones who took my baby. So I need to learn how to fight anyway.”

            “I will be dead and rotting in hell for a century before I let you near those bastards,” he growled. “I won’t repeat what they did to Wade and Anna, but no one deserves that.”

            Sparrow’s fists clenched as she tried not to retort that he wasn’t her owner and couldn’t tell her what to do. Instead she rose a little and kissed him harshly, pouring out all the attraction and frustration he inspired into it.

            His arms wrapped around her and crushed her to him, any of his former hesitancy gone. They then slid down her arms, along her sides and to her hips, forcing her to lay down again in the sleeping bags.

            His cock, erect again, burned against the flesh of her inner thigh.

            “Yes,” she breathed as he lifted her legs up by hooking his arms under her knees. “Please?”

            He growled, eyes blazing, and entered her in one smooth movement, doing exactly as he’d promised. And so, as he began to thrust, Sparrow obliged him by moaning his name as her arousal surged back like the waves crashing on the shore.

…

The faded memories given to Danse by whoever put him in the Capital Wasteland were nothing compared to the reality of Sparrow tight and hot around his cock. He’d thought her lovely when she was laid out before him, rose-flushed and glaze-eyed, but this entirely different creature who dug her nails into his biceps until it stung and moaned his name as he wanted her to was now his goddess in the flesh.

            _You want to forget the past,_ he thought as his hips snapped in rapid tempo, bracing himself against the shack wall by letting one of her legs fall and grabbing the window sill so they didn’t slide off the slick sleeping bags. _I will make you forget everything but my name._

Her hand snaked around and slid between them, brushing the curls of his public hair as she sought and found her clit. “Your hands seem to be occupied, so I decided to take care of this myself,” she husked as her fingers began to delve.

            Danse compensated for his thoughtlessness by driving himself harder and faster into her, trying to match the pace of her fluttering fingers. The rude slap of flesh was interspersed with inarticulate grunts and groans on his end, occasionally broken up by the growling of her name, and little mewls and moans on her end with the breathing of his name like a prayer.

            To think he’d tried to drive her away with his lewd confessions. It just went to show he really didn’t understand how a woman of flesh and blood worked.

            When she came with a hoarse dark cry, inner walls contracting around his cock, he emptied himself into her with a raw growl.

            “Danse,” she whispered hoarsely, rubbing his cheek as she liked to do. “Are you alright?”

            Through all of this despite his filthiest thoughts and actions, she had repeatedly asked if he was alright or if he wanted to continue, and participated with him. Danse didn’t believe in angels, not when he’d been assembled in some secret laboratory and was betrayed by his own superiors for not knowing his true nature. But this woman, she could be his new cause, a new beacon to believe in after Maxson abandoned him for being a synth.

            But damned if he was going to let her go to Corvega, with or without him.

            “I’m alright,” he told her as he disentangled himself from her and then folded his larger frame around hers protectively. “If I’m human enough for you, I guess I’m human enough for anyone.”


End file.
